Maduro celebrates landmark OPEC agreement to cut oil production

Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro (r) talks to the media after his meeting with Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) Secretary-General Mohammed Barkindo at Miraflores Palace in Caracas, Venezuela November 16, 2016. [Photo/Agencies]

CARACAS -- Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro hailed Wednesday an agreement by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) to reduce oil production for the first time in eight years.

Maduro's reaction came after the OPEC oil cartel had made a decision on the same day in Vienna to set the ceiling of oil production at 32.5 million barrels per day.

The reduction of 1.2 million barrels per day by January, will seek to reduce the oversupply of oil.

Maduro wrote on Twitter, "I thank and appreciate our OPEC partners for the important agreement we have reached...to stabilize the market."

The impact on oil prices, which have been at consistent lows in recent years, was immediate. Benchmark oil prices jumped by 10 percent and energy companies saw stocks soar as the group made its first cut since 2008.

The deal will only last for the first half of 2017 but is boosted by the decision of non-OPEC producers to drop their production by 600,000 barrels per day.

Maduro, who has seen the Venezuelan economy sink as oil prices steadily declined, has fought consistently to secure a production cut, including paying numerous visits to OPEC countries.

"Two years of efforts to recover the market and achieve fair, realistic and stable prices. I also thank the non-OPEC countries," he noted.

Venezuela's Minister of Oil and Mining, Eulogio del Pino, was present at the OPEC meeting in Vienna, Austria, where the deal was struck.

He wrote on Twitter that "we have sealed a historic OPEC agreement, in line with a preliminary pact reached in Algeria."